The sign said 5200 m.s.n.m., which I think means 5200 meters above sea level, but according to our GPS, the highest that we went today was 4795 meters above sea level. However, I am not just writing this post to argue about what signs and electronics say, I am writing this post so that anyone out there who wants to learn more about our trip can do it without leaving the comfort of their office chairs.

We drove up the hill this morning from Putre, without guides or other people, just us. We went up on the dirt road and saw some Andean Deer eating from farmers’ terraces, but those were about the only animals that we saw for that time. After that, we turned left off of the main highway and onto a road that went up towards some snowy peaks and pinnacles, up north.

After getting up to the summit with the aforementioned sign, we started down the other side, figuratively speaking, as we were still way below the top of the mountain, barely above the desert-like plains down below us. After driving for a while, we got to a large stream, , where everybody got out to see what it was like. Eryn and I crawled through the culvert. It was fun, and we were really glad that we had been wearing hiking boots to go through it, not shoes that were for running and were made of foam.

While we drove from town to town and back on that road, we saw a lot of vicunas on either side of the road. At the end, we turned around and went back the way we came, seeing-again- lots of vicunas alongside the car. When we got back to Putre, we did some work and then ate dinner.

That’s all for now,  Folks!